


Missing Shoes

by riptheh



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22657558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riptheh/pseuds/riptheh
Summary: When mysterious signals lead the Doctor and her fam to war games halfway across the universe, they find themselves embroiled in a mystery far bigger than any of them anticipated.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 30
Kudos: 110
Collections: Season 11.5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is the final story to the 11.5 project, and will be told in two parts! One that will be published this week, and one next week. I hope you all enjoy this story, and thank you to all who have taken part!

Ryan was in the kitchen when the alarm went off. So was the Doctor, which lasted approximately two seconds.

“Oh! Gotta go!” She dropped her teacup on the counter, while thankfully only clattered and didn’t break, and before Ryan could blink, was out the door and gone, her coattails flapping behind her. 

“Uh—thanks for the cuppa,” he called after her, which was probably giving her too much credit, because she had only offered to pour him some as well and hadn’t actually gotten around to it when the alarm went off. Still, it had been something, and lately, something was all they could get from her.

A cup of tea in the kitchen. The occasional joke which broke her out of her sullen silence. Not much, but better than nothing, even if they had all been getting a little short with her constant rebuffs and grumpy mood. Ryan had meant it after Gloucester, when he’d promised that they would be there for her, no matter what.

They were still waiting on the what. Sometimes, it seemed a long time coming.

With a sigh, he stood from the table, grimacing as the alarm continued to blare and went to get his own cup of tea, leaving the Doctor’s to sit on the table. Probably be cold by the time she got back to it. If she even remembered that she was drinking tea in the first place.

“Was that the Doctor’s?”

Ryan looked up at Yaz’s voice, and gave a rueful grin. “Yeah, that bloody alarm went off. Any idea what’s causing it?”

“Dunno.” Yaz crossed to the table and peered at the contents of the Doctor’s mug, wrinkling her nose. “Ryan, I know she’s really old and all, but you should not be letting her make tea. This stuff is rank.”

Ryan’s grin slid from his face. “Maybe it’s good she didn’t make mine.” He frowned at the thought, then turned back to the kettle, as Yaz thumped into a kitchen chair, pushing the mug carefully away.

“Might want to hold off on the tea,” she said. At Ryan’s curious glance, she pointed one finger to the ceiling, from which the alarm still rang. “Alarm, remember? Might not have time to drink it.”

“Oh. Right.” Ryan made a face, then reached out to turn off the kettle. “So no idea then? On the alarm, I mean.”

Yaz shrugged. “She’s put in a bunch of new ones lately. Like, loads. I asked her once, said she was looking for something. Not that Master, though,” she added at Ryan’s look. “I asked her specifically. No, it was something else, but she wouldn’t tell me what.”

Ryan frowned, and leaned against the counter. “Weird. I mean, weird is normal with her. But still. Weird.”

“Tell me about.” Yaz sunk her chin into her hands, looking distinctly put out. Or worried. She had been like that for a while, Ryan had noticed. He had a feeling it was related to the Doctor, and the attention she wasn’t getting. That, and the fact that they were all genuinely worried for her. They just didn’t know what to do.

“You think she’ll tell us now that the thing’s going off?” Ryan asked. Yaz only shook her head, and opened her mouth.

“I don’t—”

That was when the alarm shut off.

Yaz cut off, and they both looked at the ceiling in surprise. For a moment, silence reigned.

Then, the intercom crackled.

“Fam to the console room, quick! There’s an—well, not an emergency, but if it’ll get you here faster, then yes! Emergency! Now.”

The intercom cut off in a burst of static, leaving Yaz and Ryan to stare, openmouthed.

“I really hate it when she uses that thing,” Ryan grumbled. “Feels like I’m at school.”

Yaz didn’t seem to share his disgruntlement. Instead, she looked rather excited. Then again, that was just Yaz. Always excited about possible danger.

“Well?” she said. “Should we check it out?”

“I mean.” Ryan gave a rueful smile. “Don’t think we have a choice, do we?”

——————

Graham was already there by the time they made it to the console room, looking distinctly nervous. Ryan couldn’t blame him. The Doctor looked excited, which was more often than not a bad sign. For them, at least. 

“What is it?” Yaz asked the moment they arrived. She had a similar excitement to the Doctor’s in her eyes, something Ryan felt sure to be faked. Or at least partly. Sometimes, it was almost eerie how much she seemed to emulate the Doctor. 

“Yeah, what is it?” Graham echoed, distinctly less enthused. “If it’s dangerous, Doc, I need to grab a sandwich at least, because I ain’t—“

“Not dangerous,” the Doctor said, then seemed to check herself. “Well, not known to be dangerous. Not known at all, really. That’s the exciting part.”

“Right, so I ain’t counting that as non-dangerous,” Graham grumbled, but before he could add anything more, Yaz stepped forward eagerly.

“So?” she said, “what is it?”

The Doctor looked between them, and for a moment, Ryan caught a flash of—something. Not uncertainty. Not even nerves. Just—something else. A drop of the facade, just for a moment.

She was hiding something, he thought. But then again, he thought too, that was old news. The question now was what. 

“It’s a signal,” the Doctor said, “that I’ve been tracking since Berlin.”

“Berlin?” Yaz said, and this time, Ryan saw something flicker across her face. Unlike the Doctor’s slip, this he recognized immediately.

Jealousy wasn’t exactly an easy look for Yaz to hide.

“Yes, with—River.” The Doctor’s mouth twisted. “Do you remember those stolen weapons?”

“Pretty hard to forget,” Yaz said, her expression only slightly sour. This time, Ryan had to stifle a laugh, drawing strange looks from the other three.

“I remember too,” he said quickly, before the Doctor could ask the question forming on her lips. “But I thought Berlin was the end of it.”

The Doctor shook her head. “’Fraid not,” she said. “In fact, I think that might just be the very beginning.”

“See, now I’m definitely holding to my original argument,” Graham said, as the Doctor spun towards the console and grabbed a monitor, yanking it forward. If she heard him, she ignored it.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on things, over the last few planets we’ve visited,” she said. “And I’ve been starting to find things. People mysteriously recruited, kidnapped even, in remarkably similar ways. Whole armies disappeared. Weapons of the kind never seen since—well, very dangerous weapons, disappeared, and nobody can trace them.”

“Except you,” Yaz put in. Ryan almost rolled his eyes. However, the Doctor only looked over her shoulder, and shot her a rather cocky grin.

“Except me,” she replied. She spun around, pulling the monitor with her, and jabbed a finger at the screen. “And everything that’s disappeared—every weapon, every person, all seems to pop up in this quadrant.”

“Right.” Ryan nodded wisely. “And a quadrant is like…a space section?”

The Doctor grinned at him, “Exactly, Ryan! Five points.” She turned the monitor around, and shoved it back to the console, then clapped her hands together. “See, the thing is, it could be nothing. Or it could be something very important. At the very least, I think it’s worth—”

“A quick look,” Graham completed. The Doctor paused, mouth half-open, then shut it and nodded.

“Could be nothing,” she said, but she was bouncing on the soles of her boots, which meant that she was enthusiastic, which meant that it was almost certainly something. Ryan could stake his life on that. 

But the Doctor was smiling and excited, which was worlds off from her usual mood lately, and Ryan wasn’t anywhere near Yaz’s levels of eager to please, but it was nice to see the Doctor happy. Even if it involved something potentially life threatening.

So, before he could really think about what he was doing, he nodded, as did Yaz and Graham, and was rewarded with the Doctor’s enormous, light-up grin.

“Perfect!” She put her hands on her hips and rocked back on her heels, surveying them. “Look at you, fam! Diving right into—er, fun! Safe—fun.”

Then, quickly, and before any of them could react to her slip-up, she whirled around and slammed down the take-off lever, sending them all flying.


	2. Chapter 2

They were enthusiastic, and the Doctor couldn’t help but be relieved. 

Not that they usually weren’t—in fact, they usually were. They still had the same enthusiasm, the same eagerness to learn and explore and discover new things. They also had a reluctance the Doctor couldn’t quite put her finger on, though she was almost certain that she was the cause of it.

She, and her ‘mardy mood’. She, and her reluctance to share, which they had called her out on more than once. She and her secrets, which they were getting sicker and sicker of. 

They didn’t pry too much, which she was grateful for. She wasn’t sure how much she could get away with not telling them. So instead, she stayed distracted, and made sure they were distracted, and everything worked out. For the most part. Sort of. Like now, and their apparent willingness to go along with her investigation, which might— _might—_ be a tad more dangerous than she was letting on. She couldn’t be sure. But she had been tracking this pattern of signals and clues for months now, and there was nothing the Doctor loved better than a good old fashioned investigation. Especially one that she was _so_ close to deciphering.

Should be enough to distract all four of them. Quickly, the Doctor yanked a control down, then cast a surreptitious glance to the fam. They looked vaguely interested in what she was doing, which was the perfect amount of interest to be showing. Not too close to anything she didn’t particularly want revealing, but enough to keep them intrigued. Enough to keep them involved in any one of their adventures.

That’s what it felt like constantly, these days. The Doctor, shoving places and planets and mysteries in her friends’ faces, just so they wouldn’t ask the questions she didn’t want them to ask. Vaguely, she wondered when there would be an end to this. Then she wondered if there would be at all.

“Coordinates set!” she announced, and slammed the take-off lever down. Immediately, everybody went stumbling. “Hold on to something!” 

“Why do you always tell us that too late?” Graham grumbled as he grabbed a pillar. The Doctor could only shoot him an apologetic glance, as the TARDIS wrenched to the side and they all very nearly went flying.

“It’s a short trip!” the Doctor called as she clung to the console, which very quickly proceeded to not be true at all. The TARDIS rocked and spun for what seemed an eternity, and her fam’s disgruntlement grew, until at last the ship flung to a halt, sending them all stumbling for the last time.

“Short trip,” Ryan muttered, close enough for the Doctor to catch. “Short trip, she says.”

“Short is relative in the time vortex!” she called with a cheer that didn’t quite reach, and leaned over to check the readings. And frowned. “Okay. Well. I sort of expected us to land—well—”

“Well what, Doc?” Graham said in an increasingly trepidative voice. 

“Well—” The Doctor bit her lip, then reached out to tap the readings. “I mean, I sort of assumed the TARDIS would zero in on a place for us to actually _land_. A planet or something. But she’s parked us right in—AH!”

She was cut short as the TARDIS abruptly jerked, sending them all flying to the floor. The Doctor heard three mangled yelps, followed by distinct groans, and even as she hit the floor, couldn’t help but wince internally. Graham would definitely be holding this landing over her head.

Problem was, it wasn’t the landing. It couldn’t be. They had already landed, which could only mean that—

“Doc!” Graham cried as another abrupt jerk sent them flying once more. “What’s happening?”

“I—” Hand over hand, the Doctor climbed to the console and heaved herself upright, squinting at the readings. “We’ve—oh!”

“Oh what?” Yaz yelled from where she clung to a pillar. As she spoke, the TARDIS rocked once more. 

“They’ve scooped us!” The Doctor frowned, scrunching her nose, and peered closer at the monitor. “But who? And how? And why?”

“Shouldn’t you be asking that later?” Graham called.

“Yeah, we don’t want this to be like last time!” Ryan agreed. He was trying to pull himself to his feet, and failing with every tilt of the TARDIS. “Doctor, what are we gonna do?”

“We’re going to—” Quickly, the Doctor jabbed a few buttons—defense mechanisms, anti-capture weapons, and more—only for the TARDIS to beep discordantly. “We’re going to get away! Once I figure out how to—”

“Figure out how?” Yaz shot her a look of disbelief. “Doctor, what do you mean how?”

“I mean I don’t know how they’re doing it!” The Doctor yanked the zig-zag plotter, which did approximately nothing, and huffed in frustration. “Whoever they are, they’re pulling in the TARDIS, except they can’t do that unless they have—”

Without warning, the rocking stopped. The Doctor cut off, her words dying on her lips, and looked up in confusion, just as a voice echoed through the console room.

_“You have trespassed into sector 2B warfare training zone. Your ship has been identified as a type 40 TARDIS, and placed under temporal lock. You will be taken into custody and evaluated for possible intrusion upon secure operations. Any attempts to resist custody will result in your elimination.”_

The voice cut off as abruptly as it had come. The Doctor gaped.

“Temporal lock,” she said. Around her, Ryan, Yaz and Graham were slowly getting to their feet. “How can they put us under temporal lock?”

“What’s temporal lock?” Ryan asked. The Doctor, for a long moment, didn’t answer him. She just stared at the lights above, which had slowly returned to their full brightness.

Then she turned to her friends, and tried to slap a reassuring look on her face. She didn’t quite manage it.

“It’s nothing,” she said, then, at Yaz’s disbelieving look, corrected herself. “Well, it’s not nothing. It means they’ve locked the TARDIS into this time period. We can’t escape through time. Or space, for that matter.”

“So what you’re saying is, they’ve got us,” Graham said. The Doctor hesitated, then nodded grimly.

“Suppose we’ll just have to see where they take us then, won’t we?” She grinned, half-hoping that would lighten the atmosphere. It didn’t. Instead, Ryan and Graham only exchanged a glance.

She really, _really_ hated when they did that.

“Well,” she said with a broad grin that didn’t quite match the feelings in her chest, “let’s see where we end up, shall we?”

——————

They ended up on a ship. And when they stepped out the door, guards were waiting for them. 

“Right, fellas!” The Doctor stuck her hands up, and could only hope that her friends were doing the same. They probably were. Smart bunch, the fam. “Nice to see you lot. Seems we took a wrong turn.”

“Think you did, yeah,” The lead fellow, a towering, seven foot lad with far too many muscles and an array of spikes on his face, stepped forward. In large, six fingered hands, he easily handled an enormous rifle. “How did you get here? This quadrant is closed off for training exercises.”

“Training exercises?” The Doctor rocked back on her heels, intrigued despite herself. “Training for what? Training for who? Who’s in charge of you lot, anyway?”

“Shut up!” The leader barked, the muzzle of his rifle nosing closer. “You don’t ask the questions here. I do. Sef!” This was barked over his shoulder, to another towering lad. “Get on comms. See if she knows about this.”

“She?” The Doctor stepped forward, even though she knew she probably shouldn’t. That was the thing about a mystery—shove one in her face, she could never say no. “Who’s she? Is she your leader? Can I meet her?”

“No!” The leader scowled, and brandished his weapon in a way that told the Doctor she should probably shut up. “You’ll be taken to our commander! And trust me, you don’t want to meet her. The only way to do that is to do something incredibly stupid.”

“Ah.” The Doctor swallowed. “Gotcha. Only if we do something stupid.” Behind her, she heard a sigh, and it occurred to the Doctor that her fam caught on remarkably fast. That was probably a good thing, if she was being honest. Saved the Doctor a lot of explaining. “Alright, we’ll be good. Now, when do we get to see this commander of yours?”

“Soon,” the leader growled, and turned to his subordinates. “Alright, you lot. You—get back in comms, I need her updated, and Commander Girkin informed that he’s about to get four prisoners. You, ready the brig. And you—”

“Uh, sir?” One of the subordinates, a brawny fellow whose meek voice didn’t entirely match his stature, raised a tentative hand. “Should we do something about that?”

“Huh?” the leader grunted. “About what?”

“Uh—” The subordinate coughed, shuffling his feet. “Them trying to escape, sir.”

“What?” The leader spun around, and the Doctor winced, one foot already inside the TARDIS. The others were already inside, thanks to her frantic beckoning. Only she was left in the not-so-proverbial line of fire. “You! Stop where you are!”

“Think I won’t, thanks.” And with that, the Doctor jumped inside the TARDIS, slamming the doors behind her. From outside, she heard a roar of rage, but it was too late—she was already sprinting for the console, the fam hot on her heels.

“Doctor, what are we doing?” Yaz asked. “I thought you said we couldn’t escape!”

“Yeah, but safer in here, isn’t it?” The Doctor slammed a lever down which would ensure the fortitude of the doors, and began to make her way around the console, pressing buttons and throwing levers. “Besides, we’re not escaping. We’re just getting them frustrated enough to drag us to whoever’s _really_ in charge.”

“You mean that mysterious women they keep going on about?” Graham asked as the Doctor flew around the console, doing loads of things that wouldn’t make a difference. “You sure we want to meet her, Doc? I mean, if she’s in charge of those fellows—”

“Always better at the top, Graham,” the Doctor reminded him. “Besides, we want to know what’s going on, we need to get answers. And I hate to say this, but judging by their collective intelligence, those guards didn’t know enough to tell us anything. Which means we’ll have to do a little DIYing.”

“Do it yourself-captured?” Ryan said in disbelief. 

“Yep!” The Doctor crowed. With one last pressed button, she drew back from the console and crossed her arms in satisfaction. “And anyway, now we just wait. They’re probably already towing the TARDIS right—”

“Or banging on the door,” Yaz said, with a faint spark of humor in her eyes. The Doctor looked to her, then to the door, and frowned. Sure enough, she could hear them outside, clattering against the doors.

“Oh, for Rassilon’s sake,” she muttered. “Don’t they know nobody can get through TARDIS doors? I mean, you’d think since they know what a TARDIS is, they would—hey!”

She was cut off as, without warning, both doors slammed open, ricocheting off the walls as the mob of guards they had escaped from only minutes early streamed inside, snarls of anger upon their faces. The same brawny man who had threatened the Doctor led the way, brandishing his enormous rifle.

“Stay where you are!” he roared as his guards plunged into the TARDIS console room, fanning out on both sides. In a blink of an eye the entire fam was surrounded, and the Doctor heard three heavy sighs. Internally, she cringed.

“How did you get inside the TARDIS?” she blustered instead, but the leader didn’t answer. He only pressed closer, leveling his rifle only inches from the Doctor’s face.

“We have the technology,” he growled. “Now, stay still, unless you want to get blown to kingdom come.”

“Yeah, wasn’t planning on moving, actually.” Staring down the length of the rifle was turning her crosseyed. “Are you taking us to your commander?”

A slow, cruel grin spread across the leader’s face. He chortled unpleasantly. “Oh, you’re way beyond that, sorry to say. Nah, you’re going all the way up. Up to the general herself.”

“Ah.” The Doctor swallowed, and with it suppressed a grin of triumph. “I see. Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah.” The leader’s grin grew larger. “And lucky for us, we get to confiscate your TARDIS.”

Her feeling of victory vanished in an instant. In its place came consternation.

“Oh,” she said, and behind her, felt the quiet grumbling discontentment of her fam. Again, in danger, they seemed to be saying. Yet again. And her plan, which had only half-worked, now looked to be leaving them stranded. “I am sorry to hear that, actually. Very sorry indeed.”

The leader only laughed, ugly and loud, and for the first time, the Doctor really didn’t enjoy it.


	3. Chapter 3

They tossed the four of them into a small cell with a heavy glass and metal door, which they slammed shut with a resounding clang. Yaz watched as the guard stomped off, grumbling about how ‘they had to divert the whole ship to headquarters just for a few lousy prisoners’.

“Well.” The Doctor was staring at the door, looking spectacularly put out. Possibly, Yaz suspected, she hadn’t meant for them to be separated from the TARDIS, though to be honest Yaz wasn’t surprised. That seemed about par for the course with the Doctor, though the Doctor herself was loathe to admit it. “That didn’t go the way I planned, if I’m being honest.”

“Didn’t it?” Ryan said with a rather sour look on his face. Yaz couldn’t blame him; he had been tossed pretty roughly into the cell, and was now massaging what looked to be a bruised knee. “Thought that was what you wanted. Getting us to this general lady.”

“Yes, but—” The Doctor pursed her lips together, her eyes still upon the cell door. Yaz watched her, and didn’t say anything. The Doctor’s look was one she had started to recognize on their more recent adventures. A dark, sullen look, as if things weren’t going entirely to plan. Which didn’t make sense, because it wasn’t as if they ever did. It was only the Doctor, lately, who seemed intent on things going in a perfectly balanced ordeal of chaos, as if every adventure had to be perfect. Or, not perfect, but—distracting. Distracting to them, distracting to herself. 

Yaz could never figure out what she was trying to distract them from, and neither could Ryan and Graham. All they knew was that they were getting sick of it, adventure after adventure drawn out in tightly wound tension, like a dysfunctional family on a weekend camping trip. And between the four of them, at the heart of all that tension, sat whatever it was the Doctor was keeping to herself.

Sometimes, she wished the Doctor would just tell them. Actually, more than sometimes. She and the others had discussed it plenty, aired their own hypotheses and chased around theories, and come back again and again to nothing. They simply couldn’t figure it. And whatever it was, the Doctor seemed intent on keeping it close to her chest.

And in the meantime, they stumbled into adventure after adventure, and didn’t talk to each other. As usual. It was starting, Yaz thought, to get tiring.

“Alright, fam!” The Doctor spun around and clapped her hands together, the faux cheer upon her face not entirely covering the annoyance she’d worn only moments earlier. “Let’s put our heads together, yeah?”

Graham looked up from where he sat upon the sole bench in the cell. “Put our what?” he asked in disbelief.

“Heads, Graham!” She was trying, Yaz could tell. The Doctor was really trying. And it was possibly because she was trying so hard that Yaz seemed to see through it so easily, the veneer as thin as a piece of parchment paper.

“I took a sneaky reading on the way here,” the Doctor continued, hand reaching into her pocket for her sonic, “and according to the movement of the ship through hyperspace, we should arrive pretty soon. A few minutes, tops. ‘Course, there’s no telling how long they’ll leave us in here.”

“Cheers.” Ryan settled back against the gray wall, and tilted his head back to rest against the metal. “So what are we putting our heads together for, again?”

“To figure out what’s going on here!” The Doctor dropped her voice to a loud whisper, though there were no guards in sight, and stooped towards them. “Because whatever is happening here, I can tell you right now that it’s far above the heads of those guards out there. I know their species. Banorians, the lot of them. Plenty of muscles, and none between the ears. And yet somehow, they managed to break into my ship.”

She raised an eyebrow expectantly, but Ryan and Graham just stared. Yaz couldn’t blame them. She wasn’t particularly in the mood to play twenty questions.

But it always came down to this between the three of them. The Doctor tried her hardest, faking a smile through whatever was bothering her, so Yaz would try to, faking her own smile and cozying up in the hopes that maybe, someday, the Doctor would actually let slip what was on her mind. She was starting to wonder if it was a futile hope.

But that was how it worked with them, so, with a smile that was only a little forced, Yaz said, “How do you think they did that, then?”

The Doctor’s eyes moved to hers, and her smile flickered a little brighter. That familiar, manic gleam in her eye that came with discovering something she hadn’t known.

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “Well, the thing is, I have guesses, but all of those involve technologies far beyond their capabilities.”

“Yeah, well they did put us in that temporal lock thingy,” Ryan offered. “That was weird, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!” The Doctor spun around, and jabbed a finger at Ryan. “Right you are, Ryan! First they can place the TARDIS under temporal lock, then they can break in? Both of those things involve technologies far beyond anything they should be capable of! In fact—”

Then her smile dropped, melting into a frown. All of a sudden, she didn’t look like she was blustering through whatever had been bothering her in the hopes of solving a mystery. Rather, she looked genuinely worried.

“What is it, Doctor?” Yaz prompted after several moments of silence. It took the Doctor a moment to respond. Then she did, looking up and shooting Yaz a smile which couldn’t entirely hide the worried gleam in her eyes.

“Nothing,” she said, which Yaz didn’t buy at all. “Except—both of those abilities they demonstrated involved use of temporal and dimensional technologies. And there are very few species with the knowledge and understanding to wield either of them. The Banorians, especially, would have had to be taught, but—by whom?”

“Well, it’s gotta be a short list,” Graham said. The Doctor nodded, but her chin was sunk to her chest and her brow was crinkled in thought.

“Most of those species are dead,” she said shortly, and without looking up. “And I don’t know who among them could possibly thing it would be a good idea to use such things. Not after—”

Then her head jerked up, and her gaze landed upon the three of them, as if she’d forgotten they were there.

“They said training exercise,” she said. “That’s what they said, right? I’m not making it up?”

“Warfare training exercise,” Yaz recalled. “I remember. Which is funny, because it sounds to me as if they’re training for—”

“War.” The Doctor nodded, her face grim. Her lips were pursed tightly together, and as Yaz watched, she looked away and ran a hand distractedly through her hair. “It sounds like they’re training for war. But who—?”

She was interrupted by an enormous jolt of the ship, which sent them all tumbling. The Doctor stumbled, and grabbed the cell wall for balance, just as the rocking ceased.

“Docked,” she announced, just Yaz saw Graham open his mouth to ask. She watched him close it slowly. “Must’ve arrived.”

“Well that’s good, innit?” Graham asked. “You said we wanted to see their leader.”

“Well, yes.” The Doctor was staring at the cell door, a deep furrow in her brow. “Only now I’m thinking I might not. Well, not yet.”

“What?” Ryan was in the process of raising himself painfully to his feet. “Why not?”

“Well, I’d like to see where my ship is held for one thing.” The Doctor was still studying the door. As Yaz watched, she withdrew her sonic, and waved it over the frame, then drew it close to study the readings, frowning. “And for another, I’d like to see a bit more of these headquarters before I figure out what I want to say to whoever we’re going to meet.”

“Oh.” It was Graham who understood the implication first, and Yaz watched, with some vague amusement, as he went white with it. “Don’t tell me. We’re not going to—”

“Break out?” The Doctor looked over her shoulder, and gave him a big grin. “I’m already there, Graham.”

Without looking, she extended her sonic to the door, and pressed something. The sonic whirred, and the door creaked open. Behind her, Graham sighed.

—————

The hallway was void of guards, which Yaz found strangely suspicious, though the Doctor assured her that was to be expected.

“Banorians aren’t known for their wits,” she explained as they crept down the hallway. “That door was made to electrify anybody who tried to break through it. They probably didn’t expect us to get out, and besides, you can tell they weren’t that enthusiastic about keeping us in in the first place.” She made a face. “Probably just afraid they’ll get in trouble if they let a TARDIS swan about their training zone.”

“Okay.” Yaz couldn’t quite replicate the Doctor’s confidence. “Except aren’t we the whole reason that they came here in the first place?”

The Doctor opened her mouth to refute, and clearly didn’t have an answer. She stood there for a moment with her jaw open, then snapped it shut. 

“Yasmin Khan,” she murmured. “Ten points, as always.”

And that was precisely when the alarm went off.

“Oh, bloody—” Graham said, which was cut off by the Doctor’s shout.

“Run!” she cried, and burst into a sprint herself, leaving the others to follow behind, pounding down the narrow hallways as the obnoxiously loud alarm blared over their heads.

“Doctor!” Ryan called as they rounded yet another corner. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“To an exit!” The Doctor cried. Yaz heard Ryan huff behind her.

“Could be more specific!” He called, but to this she didn’t answer. Instead, she only pulled up short at an intersection, then grabbed Yaz by the hand and dragged her down another hallway, leaving the boys to follow.

“Some warning—” Yaz hissed, only for the Doctor to clamp a hand over her mouth. And just in time too; even as she opened her mouth to make a muffled protest, the pounding of feet against metal grating silenced her. A moment later, a group of Banorian guards pounded past the hallway they were in, not even bothering to give it a glance. 

The moment they were gone, the Doctor withdrew her hand, allowing Yaz to suck in a breath.

“Where are they going?” she whispered to the Doctor.

“Probably to check our cell,” the Doctor responded, her eyes fixed upon the spot the guards had passed. “Which means we want to be heading the opposite way.”

“Sure,” Ryan said. He jerked his chin to the hallway. “Shouldn’t we get going though? Before they get back?”

“Right you are, Ryan.” It was the Doctor as usual who took the lead, brushing past the three of them and into the hallway, then turning in the direction the guards had come.

“Doc,” Graham whispered as they crept along the hallway. “What are we going to do if the guards come back?”

“Our best bet?” the Doctor said. “Run. Or! Stay behind me as I do something extremely clever.”

“Right,” Graham grumbled. “And I don’t suppose you could clue us in as to what that is, do you?”

For answer, the Doctor only glanced back and tapped the side of her nose before moving on. 

They didn’t run into any guards as they made their way to the exit, and as they came closer, Yaz saw why. The exit to the ship was shut by a heavy metal door, which she knew immediately had to be locked. Clearly, the Banorians didn’t expect them to get out of the ship. Then, they hadn’t expected them to get out of the cell either.

“Can you sonic it?” Yaz asked the Doctor, who only nodded and glanced around before stepping forward, her sonic already out and in hand. She waved it over the frame, the device whirring softly, and stepped back as the doors groaned, then slowly began to part.

Ryan, Yaz and Graham crowded behind her as they did, eagerness to escape the claustrophobic ship mingling with the leftover instinct of flight. The Doctor stepped forward as they did so, only to stop in the frame of the door, and stare. A moment later, Yaz saw why.

“Doctor—” She stepped up to the Doctor’s shoulder, jaw dropping slowly. “What is that?”

It took several moments of stunned silence for her to realize that the Doctor didn’t have an answer.


	4. Chapter 4

They were standing on a deck. Or at least to Yaz, it could only be described as a deck. Before them, the metal floor stretched only a good twenty meters before dropping into nothingness. When she looked to the right, then to the left, she saw that the floor they were on stretched off into the distance, far enough that it seemed to curve backwards, disappearing behind them. There were more floors stacked above them, and probably below too, open faced and peering out into empty space, like a building with all floors and no walls.

And before them, hanging in what appeared to be the emptiness of space, was something Yaz couldn’t describe.

It looked as if somebody had taken an axe to space itself, and gouged out a long crack, running high and vertical, so tall that when Yaz craned her neck to peer upwards, she couldn’t find its end. It pulsed softly with a golden light, though whatever lay on the other side, Yaz couldn’t say.

“Doctor,” she said again, urgently. “What is that?”

“That?” The Doctor didn’t even turn to look at her. She was still staring at the—well, whatever it was. “You know, Yaz, I don’t know.”

She was lying. Yaz could tell immediately. Her voice was too careful, too quiet. Too sincere, to be anything but a lie.

“You sure?” Ryan sidled up on the other side of the Doctor, and in his face, Yaz caught the same look she knew herself to be wearing. He thinks she’s lying too. “You sort of look like you recognize it.”

“Do I?” For a long moment, the Doctor continued to gaze at the crack before them. Behind them, in the bowels of the ship they had just stepped out of, the alarm blared dully. For several seconds, nobody moved. Because, Yaz realized a beat later, they were all waiting for the Doctor to tell them what to do.

“Doctor—” Yaz stepped forward and gave the Doctor a cautious nudge. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

“Huh? What?” At last the Doctor tore her gaze from the crack, and turned to Yaz. “Oh—yes! C’mon, fam!”

With that she took off to the left, though Yaz couldn’t determine why, leaving Ryan, Yaz and Graham to catch up. Quickly, Yaz broke into a jog, ignoring the grumbles of Ryan and Graham behind her to catch up to the Doctor, striding along ahead.

“Doctor,” she said as she caught up, “what is that thing?” 

“What is what thing?” The Doctor didn’t look at her. Yaz huffed.

“Don’t play dumb,” she hissed. “You know what I’m talking about! We’re walking right by it.”

“That?” The Doctor jerked a thumb to the open space to their left. 

“Yeah.”

“That,” the Doctor said, without lessening her pace, “is something far beyond the capabilities of any being in this universe to create. And yet somehow, whoever’s here is doing just that.”

“Okay,” Yaz said flatly. “But what is it.”

At this, hesitation flashed across the Doctor’s face. Her stride stuttered, then picked up again. 

“I’m not sure,” she said. “It looks—well, it looks like a crack, doesn’t it? A great big crack in the universe. Only I don’t know why anybody would go about opening one up.”

“Me neither.” Yaz searched the Doctor’s face, and found nothing. Nothing but a hint of worry, seen in the slight crease of her brow. “Does anything look familiar to you? Like—I dunno, the technology or something? You said that the Banorians—”

“Nothing looks familiar to me.” The Doctor cut her off swiftly, and so suddenly that Yaz paused, trailing back in surprise. The Doctor didn’t stop, but kept moving ahead, leaving Yaz to stare at her back as Ryan and Graham caught up.

“Did she bite your head off?” Graham asked sympathetically as they approached. Yaz could only nod.

“Yeah, and lied again,” she managed with a huff. “Or at least, I think she did. She knows something, doesn’t she? Something she isn’t telling us.”

“She always knows something she isn’t telling us,” Ryan said grimly, and propelled Yaz forward with a gentle clap on the back. “C’mon. Before she leaves us all in the dust. Again.”

“You notice how she’s been doing that a lot?” Graham grumbled as they kept moving. The Doctor, a few meters ahead, didn’t appear to hear them. “Going off on her on, not telling us things. I mean, we all know she’s keeping something to herself, but there’s got to be more to it.”

“Yeah, like whatever it is about this place,” Ryan said in a hushed voice. He cast a pointed look towards the crack off to their left, looming large and ominous in the open space. Even though they were a good five meters from the edge, Yaz found herself edging away anyway, just in case. She didn’t like they way it opened out into open space, with no handrails to stop somebody from falling over. OSHA, she thought with a hint of amusement, would have a fit.

“She said she didn’t know anything,” Yaz couldn’t help but add, even though even she knew it was hopeless. Of course the Doctor knew something. And of course she was keeping it from them. That was her mode of operation these days, much as the three of them despised it.

“Well, even if she did, she ain’t like to share, is she?” Ryan said. When Yaz didn’t respond to this, he raised his voice. “Hey, Doctor, where are we going?”

“Command room,” the Doctor responded. “I want to take a look at what’s going on.”

“Yeah, and how’re we going to do that?” Graham called. “Seeing as this place is enormous, and none of us know the first thing about where to go.”

Without warning, the Doctor stopped, sending them all reeling to a halt. For a moment, Yaz couldn’t see why. Then she caught a hint of movement, just off to their right, and her heart sank.

A guard. She hadn’t noticed him because his gray uniform melded into the gray of the walls around him, but now that she noticed him, it wasn’t easy to figure out from there that he would notice them too. They didn’t exactly look like they belonged, with the Doctor’s strange clothing and their own twenty first century garb.

“Doctor,” she whispered. “How are we going to get—”

“Hey!” Before Yaz even had time to finish her sentence, the Doctor was marching off, one hand raised in salutation. “You there!”

“Oh, for goodness—” Graham groaned behind her. “Of course. Just swan in, that’s what she would do. We’ll be lucky if we get another jail cell.”

“If we don’t go straight to execution, or whatever it is they have in this century,” Ryan muttered. “C’mon, let’s see what she’s doing. Before we run into someone else.”

They approached cautiously, in contrast to the Doctor, who was now having a cheery conversation with a confused but suspicious guard, his fingers tight upon the rifle in his hands. 

“Who did you say you were?” he asked with narrowed eyes as Yaz, Ryan and Graham came within earshot.

“The Doctor!” The Doctor said cheerfully, and when the guard only stared, shoved her hand into her pocket and yanked out her psychic paper, which she then shoved into his face. “Here to inspect the command room. Me and my friends. Er, fellow inspectors.”

“Fellow in—” The guard squinted at the paper, and all of the blood abruptly drained from his face. “Oh. _Oh_. I didn’t know she had blood relatives visiting.”

“Blood—” Yaz mouthed to Graham, who only shrugged. The Doctor, however, seemed to roll with it.

“Yep!” She whipped the paper back, folding it back into her pocket. “That’s me. Mighty close, actually. Now, could you take us to this command room?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am.” The guard gulped and straightened. “Right away. Would you like an audience with the general as well?”

That easy. It was always that easy with the Doctor. Yaz couldn’t help but shake her head. Sometimes in awe, sometimes in frustration. As she watched, the Doctor turned and threw them a wink. ‘Shall we?’ she mouthed.

One by one, they nodded. At this, she turned back to the guard, and tossed him another big grin.

“Yeah, I think we will, after we finish the—ah, inspection. Now, where did you say this was…?”

And as the guard led them off, down some nondescript hallway, Yaz couldn’t help but think that things were either going to get much easier, or get a lot more complicated.


	5. Chapter 5

The guard led them down several curving hallways and through a brief stint in a glass-plated elevator, before dropping them off at the command room. 

“I—um—I’ll get the general?” He phrased it as a question. All his swagger had disappeared with the flash of the Doctor’s psychic paper, leaving him about as nervous as the fam—or possibly more, Yaz thought, judging by the thin sheen of sweat on his brow. Vaguely, she wondered just what kind of relatives this general had to make anybody so nervous.

“That’d be great, thanks!” The Doctor dismissed him with a careless wave of her hand. She was already moving towards the center of the room, where a console sat, not dissimilar to a TARDIS console, though this was as flat as a table and hexagonal. 

“What’re you looking at?” Ryan asked the Doctor’s back. She didn’t turn around, but rather bent over the table.

“Plans,” she answered. “Training plans, building plans—anything I can find, really. I’d like to know what it is they’re trying to open up into the universe. And why they’ve—aha!”

The Doctor stepped back with the press of a button, and Yaz watched as a hologram bloomed over their heads, folding out into what looked to be—

“Are those planets?” Yaz asked.

“And stars,” Graham murmured, stepping forward. He reached out tentatively to touch one, and watched his finger pass right through. “It looks like a map.”

“It is a map.” The Doctor was frowning, her hands on her hips as she examined the hologram above their heads. “It’s a map of this entire quadrant. And it looks like they have military forces training throughout the entire thing.”

“What, really?” Ryan stepped forward, looking vaguely impressed. “How big is a quadrant, anyway? Bigger than a galaxy?”

“Much, much bigger.” The Doctor was leaning forward now, towards the center of the hologram, squinting and frowning. Yaz eyed her for a moment, then stepped closer.

“Where are we then?” she asked after a moment of silence. The Doctor still wasn’t paying them any attention, too busy with whatever mystery she was trying to solve in her head. A mystery Yaz could only wish she would share with the three of them.

“Ah, see.” The Doctor drew back slightly, though her eyes remained upon the planets and stars scattered above their heads. “We’re right at the center of it. Or, well, as near as could be. And that’s where that opening is.”

“You mean the thing we saw out there, Doc?” Graham asked. The Doctor nodded.

“Looks like it.” She took a step back, then turned to face them, clapping her hands together as if she were about to deliver a lecture. However, her eyes didn’t quite match up. They were distant, worried. As Yaz watched, they darted anxiously above their heads to the stars and planets splayed across the room.

“So, what is it?” Yaz asked, eager to steer the conversation once it became clear the Doctor wasn’t about to. There was something about the Doctor’s expression that unsettled her. She didn’t look as if she knew what was going on, yet at the same time, she looked as if she knew far too much. “What are we up against?”

“War games,” The Doctor’s face took on a distinctly unpleasant note. “Games played across the quadrant to prepare for war. Only that’s what I don’t understand. What war? Who’s uniting these people?”

“Uh, Doc?” Graham pointed. “Scene’s changing.”

“What?” The Doctor looked up, then spun around as the hologram began to shift. “Oh! What’s it doing now, then? Ryan, did you press something?”

“No!” Ryan exclaimed. “I’ve been standing over here the whole time. It did that on its own.”

“No, I did it, actually.” A woman’s voice sounded behind them, and as one they spun around to the door, just as it slid open. The woman, with dark hair stylized in a short haircut, stepped through and cast them a warm smile. Her eyes roamed only briefly over Ryan, Yaz and Graham before landing on the Doctor. Something in her gaze tightened. “I assumed you’d want me to give you the tour.” 

“Ah, yes, actually!” It was the Doctor who stepped forward before the others could recover. She smiled broadly and extended a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m the Doctor, and these are my ma—fellow investigators. We’re here to, ah, investigate your systems.”

The woman’s smile widened in a way Yaz wasn’t entirely sure she liked. Her eyes remained fixed on the Doctor, sparkling with something Yaz couldn’t place. “Did you really think I’d buy that?”

“Buy—” The Doctor’s expression dropped for a moment, before her plastered smile snapped back into place. “I mean, don’t you think buy is a harsh word? I prefer cooperate—”

Without warning, the woman laughed, a high, tinkling sound. “Oh, it’s fine. You don’t have to keep up the act, you know. I’m just happy to see you. I sent a call, but I didn’t think you would respond.”

“Call?” Now the Doctor looked even more nonplussed. “Uh—sorry, who did you send that call to, exactly?”

The woman laughed again, and shook her head, as if the Doctor were being extremely silly. “Oh, c’mon. It’s me, Doctor.”

“You.” Clearly, the Doctor was missing something. So was Yaz, and the others. “Right. And you would be—?”

“Please.” The woman shook her head, still smiling. “You don’t recognize your own granddaughter?”


	6. Chapter 6

The Doctor was white as a ghost. Yaz could only stare. Not at the woman, who was still smiling, though there was now something stiff about it, something waiting. Instead, she could only stare at the Doctor, and beside her, she knew Graham and Ryan were doing the same. Inside, she was spinning.

A granddaughter. But the Doctor had said her entire family was gone. Dead, even. So how could she have a granddaughter?

But from the look on her face, Yaz realized suddenly, perhaps the Doctor had thought the same thing.

The Doctor stepped forward, bone white and eyes white, and swallowed hard. “S-Susan?”

The woman—Susan—smiled, but this one was soft, almost kind. “Hello, grandfather. It’s nice to see you.”

“Susan.” The Doctor’s voice came choked. “It’s—but how—”

Susan stepped forward, and Yaz couldn’t help but notice that even with the Doctor’s slight stature, Susan was just a tad shorter. She looked up at the Doctor, that almost kind smile still upon her face.

“I escaped,” she said simply. “You remember that, right, grandfather? The war. Who fought in it. Who died.”

“The war—” Came Ryan’s voice behind Yaz, baffled, but if either Susan or the Doctor heard him, neither showed it. They looked only at each other, lost in a reunion Yaz felt neither had ever imagined receiving.

“I remember,” the Doctor said sharply, some of the astonishment dropping away from her voice. “I remember who died. And I remember who came back with Gallifrey, dear. You didn’t.”

She took a step back as she said this, and without thinking, so did Yaz. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she was used to mirroring the Doctor’s movements, and her instincts were spot on, always. 

And if she was stepping away, rather than from, her apparently long lost granddaughter—

“Grandfather—” Susan’s smile dropped like a stone. She didn’t step closer, but her eyes roamed over the Doctor, uncertain. A tad disappointed. “I know you’ve never been the hugging type, but—”

“You’re dead, Susan.” The Doctor’s voice cut sharply through whatever Susan was about to say. “I’m sorry, love. But you’re dead. You died in the Time War, and you didn’t come back when Gallifrey did. I know. I searched for you.”

“Not hard enough, apparently.” Something flashed in Susan’s eyes, and she took a step closer, closing the gap between the two of them. “You know, there’s a great big mess locked away in that war. I’m only lucky to escape it. Almost as lucky as the leaders of our people.”

Something hardened in the Doctor’s gaze then. Her eyes roamed over Susan, and her jaw tightened.

“They deserved to come back, Susan,” she said softly. “I know what happened in the war, I know what they did. But they deserved to come back. The children of Gallifrey deserved to live.”

“What’s Gallifrey?” Yaz heard Graham whisper to Ryan. Ryan only gave a small grunt in reply, one which clearly said ‘I don’t know’. 

“And the rest of the children left in that war?” Susan asked. “Did they deserve to stay there?”

“I—no—” the Doctor spluttered, and that was about when Yaz had enough.

“I’m sorry, what are you talking about?” She stepped forward, drawing both Susan’s and the Doctor’s gazes. The Doctor’s eyes connected with hers, and she gave her the most minuscule shake of her head.

“Yaz,” she began, “you don’t—”

“I will though,” she said sharply. “Doctor, you have to tell us what’s going on sometime. Sometimes, at least. Who is she?” She beckoned towards Susan. “Is she really your granddaughter? And what’s she doing here?”

The Doctor opened her mouth, let it hang there for a moment, then snapped it shut again. She swallowed.

“Actually, that’s a good question, Yaz.” She worked up a smile, one which didn’t at all make it to her eyes. “Five points?”

She offered it as a question rather than a reward, a ‘please shut up’. Yaz didn’t take it. Instead, she rounded on Susan.

“Are you really her daughter?” she demanded, and behind her, heard the boys rustle uncomfortably. Probably, she was doing something dumb. After all, none of them had ever agreed on when exactly they would confront the Doctor, if at all. But now was looking as good of a time as any, and Yaz, well—Yaz wanted answers.

Susan smiled, tightly. Indulgent.

“Yes,” she said, “and it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. But I had hopes you’d come.” This she addressed to the Doctor, who only looked grim. “Especially once you saw what we were doing here.”

“Doing here.” The Doctor was tightlipped, her jaw hard. “You mean war games across the entire quadrant? Stealing weapons, gathering people to fight? Susan, what are you doing? And why on earth do you think I would ever approve of this?”

“Approve?” Fire flashed in Susan’s eyes, and she took a step back. “Grandfather, I’m not asking for you approval. I’m asking for your help.”

“My help?” the Doctor asked. “For what?”

At this Susan smiled, wide and not at all friendly.

“For the war,” she said. “The war on Gallifrey.”


	7. Chapter 7

“For the war,” she said. “The war on Gallifrey.”

Those words meant nothing to Yaz, but they very clearly meant something to the Doctor. She frowned, confusion filling her eyes, and then, as revelation hit, they widened. She stepped forward, one hand out.

“Susan,” she said. “Is that what that is, out there? A crack in the universe? In—”

“Reality itself?” Susan smiled, but now there was a hint of excitement to it—flickering in her eyes, stretching her grin tight across her face. “Of course, grandfather. I knew you’d figure it out right away. Not that I wasn’t planning on telling you.”

She turned towards the console in the center of the room, and made a movement with her hand. Immediately, the planets and stars around them vanished, and in its place, the crack they had seen outside appeared, sparkling dully in the dark room. Susan grinned; her teeth flashed white in the darkness.

“A crack in reality,” she murmured, and stepped towards it, her eyes shining brightly, with—enthusiasm? Fervor? Yaz couldn’t tell. “My life’s work. Well—this life.”

She chuckled softly, then turned towards the Doctor and the others, and tucked her hands behind her back, straightening in an officious manner. As if she were about to deliver a lecture.

“The crack is the result of my knowledge of dimensional engineering paired with an entire quadrant’s worth of resources.” She smiled. “And of course, whatever I could gather from the rest of the universe.”

The Doctor stepped forward, her eyes dark. “Susan, you know this can’t—”

But Susan only waved her away, and continued talking. “Hang on, grandfather. Let me finish.” She turned back to the crack, gesturing. 

“We’ve taken over the entire quadrant for military exercises. All civilians have been evacuated, of course. And while my forces have been practicing, I’ve been working on opening up a crack—” she swept her hand up and down its length— “just wide enough to get all of my forces through, and in orbit around Gallifrey.”

Her eyes were glowing as she described it. She lowered her hand slowly, then turned to the Doctor. 

“And once we’re in orbit,” she said. Her eyes were fixed squarely upon the Doctor as she spoke. “We’ll bring the entire planet to its knees, and deliver retribution on those same Time Lords who led the universe into war.”

“What?” 

This was Ryan, who managed to speak up before the Doctor got there. All eyes turned to him, and he drew back, surprised, but kept going.

“I’m sorry, but what are you invading?” he said. “And why? Isn’t Ga—Gallifrey the Doctor’s home planet?”

He looked to the Doctor to confirm, who hesitated, then nodded. At this, Ryan turned back to Susan.

“Why would you invade it?” he exclaimed. “And sorry, but tearing a hole in reality doesn’t exactly sound like a solid plan. I don’t get any of this. Or why you think the Doctor would help.”

Susan frowned, and for a moment, Yaz thought that she might rebuke him. But she didn’t. She only studied him for a long moment, then spoke.

“The Doctor will help because she knows the same as I do that our people are some of the worst beings in the universe—ah, out of the universe.” She grimaced. “And the universe that deserves justice. We deserve justice. That’s why I’m doing this. And she agrees with me.”

She nodded to the Doctor, who was only staring at her, something unreadable upon her face. Ryan glanced to her, then back to Susan.

“Are you really related?” he asked. Susan’s eyes flitted to the Doctor. Then, she nodded.

At this, Ryan drew back and crossed his arms.

“Well, you don’t seem it, if you don’t mind me saying,” he said. “And she’s not going to help you. We’re not going to help you.”

Susan smiled at him, indulgently. 

“I won’t force any of you to help me,” she said. “This isn’t your fight to win or lose. But grandfather—”

She turned slightly to the Doctor, then paused as the Doctor gave the smallest shake of her head. Susan stared at her, then her smile dropped into a frown.

“Grandfather, you know that—”

“The war is over, Susan,” the Doctor said gently. “And invading Gallifrey won’t get you anywhere. I promise.”

Susan stared at her for a long moment, then drew back, reproachful.

“I may be your granddaughter, but I’m not the same girl I was all those years ago,” she spat. “A rebuke isn’t going to stop me from doing what I have to. And besides, you know that the Time Lords, no matter what they say, are never ones to sit back and watch. They manipulate, they influence. The Celestial Intervention Agency alone—”

“I’m not telling you not to,” the Doctor said quietly. “I’m telling you that it wouldn’t matter. Because Gallifrey doesn’t exist anymore.”

Silence plunged over the room. Susan stared. So too did Ryan, Yaz, and Graham. It was Graham who broke it first.

“You never told us that, Doc. You never told us anything like that.”

“I know.” The Doctor’s eyes were upon Susan. For the first time, Yaz noticed just how incredibly tired they were. “Because it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Gallifrey is gone, dear. And there’s no point ripping up reality just to check.”

For a long moment, Susan didn’t move, nor react. She only stared at the Doctor, speechless. 

Then, her expression twisted. 

“You’re lying to me,” she hissed, and drew back, anger curling her lip. “Of all the—this is a new low, even for you, grandfather. Lying to me because you think that telling me some ugly tale will get me to give in? After all the work I’ve put into this?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m no longer a young girl. I don’t have to listen to you. Guards!”

The doors split open, and several uniformed guards burst through. Susan waved a dismissive hand.

“Lock them up,” she said. “All of them. This close to the event, we can’t have anything impeding our progress.”

“Susan—” the Doctor began, but the guards already had their hands on the four of them, pushing them out the door and into the hallway. “Susan!”

But then they were out the doors, which slid shut with a pneumatic hiss, cutting off whatever the Doctor had been about to say.


	8. Chapter 8

The guards tossed them in a cell even more cramped and dismal than the first. Yaz couldn’t help but note miserably that it was the second cell they had been thrown into in less than a day. That had to be some record, she decided, though even that, she doubted. With the Doctor, one could never be sure.

Though, ‘never be sure’, was turning out to be particularly apt. As Yaz made her way to her feet, wincing with fresh bruises, she couldn’t help but notice that only the Doctor hadn’t returned to her feet. She sat where the guards had tossed her, staring dismally at the ground. She didn’t look up as the others rose, then fidgeted, tossing each other rather obvious glances.

It was Graham who broke the silence first. He crossed his arms, putting all his weight on one hip, and said, “I think we could do with some explaining, Doc.”

The Doctor didn’t look up at his words. She only continued to stare at the ground. Then, with one finger, she began to trace circles in the dust.

At last, she spoke. “That was my granddaughter.”

Ryan snorted—rather rudely, Yaz thought. “I think we got that, Doctor. Only why is she invading your home planet? And how is it gone? A planet can’t be—”

“Can’t it, Ryan?” the Doctor said quietly. “You saw Orphan 55. Is it so hard to believe that other planets have been destroyed?”

Ryan paused, then shut his mouth. His jaw worked for a moment.

“So your planet was destroyed like Earth?” he said at last. “By climate change? And pollution?”

The Doctor shook her head. “Not by either of those, no. I’d rather not get into the details.”

“But—” Ryan began.

“Ryan.” Yaz cast him a warning look. He glanced to her, then shut his draw and drew back, his body language clear. _You ask the questions then_.

“Sorry, Doctor,” Yaz said. “It’s not—we just want to know what’s going on. None of this makes sense.”

The Doctor’s finger paused in the dust. She stared at it for a long moment, then abruptly sagged.

“You’re right,” she said. “None of this makes sense. Except in one sort of way, it really does. And I suppose that’s what I’m having trouble getting my head around.”

Without warning, she pushed herself to her feet, and turned to face the cell door. She studied it for several moments, but didn’t seem to be looking for a weakness or way out. Rather, she seemed lost in sober thought.

“There’s something you should know about me,” she said after several moments. “And about my past. And the universe itself.”

Neither Ryan, Graham, nor Yaz answered. They only glanced to each other. 

Finally, Graham said, “What do you mean, the past of the universe?”

The Doctor turned at his question, and gave him a wan smile. “Just what I said, Graham. The past, or what you think to be the past, isn’t entirely the past that happened. There are other parts too, things that got erased, or never happened then didn’t, or weren’t supposed to happen but did anyway.”

“Right.” Graham swallowed thickly, disbelieving. “Not sure I understand any of that, but I’ll go with it. What didn’t happen?”

“Actually, it’s what did,” the Doctor corrected. She glanced to Ryan and Yaz, listening intently, then continued.

“Long ago—well, not long ago, because it never happened—there was an enormous war between my people and the Daleks. So enormous that it took up the entire universe, and nearly wiped it out. The only reason it didn’t was because—it got stopped. By somebody.” She paused, and swallowed. “The thing is, we all fought in it. I did. Susan did. And we did terrible things, and so did the other side—well, there were more than one by then end of it—and most of us died. Well, everybody died, at least once. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Behind myself? Never mind. The point is, the only ones who escaped unscathed were—” she swallowed again— “my people.”

“But I thought your people were—”

“Ryan,” Yaz said through gritted teeth. However, the Doctor only nodded. 

“They are,” she said quietly. “But not everybody knows that. Susan doesn’t. And that’s why this plan of hers is going to fail.”

“Can’t you explain it to her?” Yaz asked. Beside her, Graham snorted.

“Believe me, that’s an impossible task. Getting the grandkid to listen.”

“Hey!” Ryan exclaimed, but Yaz knew immediately what he was doing. And sure enough, a small smile twitched across the Doctor’s face.

“Agreed,” she said, and something twisted woefully in her expression. “She never was all that great at listening.”

Silence fell briefly over the cell at this. Yaz shifted awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

“Well, we’ve got to do something,” she said at last. “I mean, we have to stop this—right, Doctor?”

The Doctor looked to her and nodded.

“Of course. But she won’t listen to me now.”

“Unless you tell her you changed your mind,” Ryan said. When the other two looked at him, he shrugged. “What? Sometimes a white lie works. Besides, the Doctor lies all the time.”

“You’re not supposed to be taking that as an example,” Graham said with a frown. But the Doctor was eying Ryan thoughtfully.

“You know, Ryan, you might be right,” she said. “Either way, it’s the best chance we’ve got. I need to talk to her, to—to make her understand.”

She finished this quietly, and dropped once more into a heavy silence. For a long moment, it hung over the cell, and in it Yaz could sense the Doctor’s grief, as heavy as the clouds before a rainstorm. Briefly, she wondered just how long it had been since she’s seen her granddaughter. Then she decided she probably was under-guessing.

“You’re right,” she said after a moment, and when the Doctor looked up, cast her an encouraging smile. It was the least she could do. “Shall we get the guard?”

The Doctor studied her for a long moment, then slowly broke into a smile. Not a big one, not her usual one, but there nonetheless.

“Of course,” she said. “’Bout time we get a shift on, anyway.”


	9. Chapter 9

The Doctor was exceedingly polite to the guard on her way back to the command room. Which was to say, she didn’t speak at all. She wasn’t exactly great at the whole ‘not being rude’ thing, and on days like these, with her fam locked away and her granddaughter gone rogue in an attempt to invade her home planet, it was best to be prudent. 

Especially when everything had gone sideways in such a short amount of time.

She felt trapped; she felt pushed up against a wall. Giving the fam an explanation—though warranted, she had to admit—had left her with an icky feeling, the stale taste of guilt at the back of her mouth. Now, when she tried to focus away from it, she only landed on a different guilt, old and deep. The guilt of a granddaughter she had left behind. The guilt of a war she had tried to forget. 

She wondered if she had been foolish to try.

Susan looked up as the guard let her into the command room, and smiled.

“Hello, grandfather,” she said, and the Doctor’s hearts nearly cracked in half. It was terrible and wonderful, she thought, that a voice, though changed in pitch and sound and everything else, could still sound the exact same. 

“Hello, dear,” she said, and behind her heard the quiet pneumatic hiss of the doors as the guard exited. “I came to talk to you.”

Susan straightened, and frowned. “I was under the impression you came to work with me.”

“Well, that—” The Doctor winced. “You know how I love my lies.”

“You always use them when it suits you.” Susan was still frowning as her eyes traveled over the Doctor, and the Doctor wondered what she was seeing. The same old man, from all those years ago? Or somebody unrecognizable?

“So you still don’t approve of my plan.” Susan’s eyes darkened, and for a moment, the Doctor was tempted to lie. Instead, she shook her head. 

“You know I don’t, Susan,” she said gently. “How could I? Revenge doesn’t suit you—it doesn’t suit anybody. The war is over, and there’s no use starting a new one. It’s just more blood on your hands.”

“And how much blood lies on the hands of the Time Lords?” Susan shot back. “Of the High Council? And don’t throw that line at me, grandfather—you’re pretty good at revenge yourself.”

The Doctor winced. “Yes but—oh, what’s that line about not as I do?”

She meant it humorously, trying to lighten the atmosphere. It didn’t quite work. Susan’s eyes narrowed, and she took a step forward.

“You haven’t been around long enough to tell me what to do, grandfather,” she said. “You never have been. And if you aren’t going to help me, then I’ll just call the guards.”

She turned back to the command console, presumably to do just that, and the Doctor watched, frozen in uncertainty. Of course—Susan had always been stubborn. Why had she expected anything else? Only it didn’t matter—none of this mattered. It was pointless, because—

“Gallifrey is dead, Susan,” she said softly. Susan’s shoulders hunched, and her hands froze for a moment over the controls, before continuing.

“Another one of your white lies, grandfather?”

“Not this time.” The Doctor stepped closer, carefully. “I swear to you. I wouldn’t lie about that. It would only be painful for the both of us.”

“Hmmm.” Susan continued to work, her back to the Doctor. For a long moment, silence reigned. “Supposed we’ll see about that.”

“Or you could trust me,” the Doctor said quietly. Susan only let out a laugh.

“You, Doctor?” Without warning, she spun on her heel, and jabbed a finger at the Doctor. “I’m terribly sorry, grandfather, but of all the advice you have ever given, that might have to be the worst. I love you, I do, but I could never trust you.”

The Doctor swallowed, and felt that same guilt swirl in her stomach. “First time for everything,” she tried weakly. Susan just scoffed, and turned back to the controls. For several more seconds, neither of them spoke.

Then, Susan broke the silence. “You know, even if I believed you—”

The Doctor straightened hopefully. “Yes?”

“It would be far too late.” Susan flicked one last control, then turned to face the Doctor, and crossed her arms. She eyed her for a long moment, lips pursed. 

“The rift I’ve opened is no longer in flux,” she said. “All my troops are gathering. In a short time, it’ll be open. And then, I’ll lead the last invasion of Gallifrey.”

She paused, and her eyes lingered over the Doctor for a long moment. Gauging, almost hopeful.

“You could help me, if you want,” she said quietly. “You could help lead.”

The Doctor shook her head slowly. “You know I could never do that.”

Susan stared at her for a long moment. Then, abruptly, she shrugged.

“Fine. Then you’ll just have to watch it burn.” And with that, she pushed off of the console and brushed right past the Doctor, and out the door.


	10. Chapter 10

For a moment, the Doctor stood there, frozen. Distantly, she knew that she ought to move. She had to think of a plan, and stop Susan before it was too late. Yet, she couldn’t make herself move.

She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to fight against her own granddaughter, the last person left in her family, whom she had thought to be dead for so long. She didn’t want to force her to failure, even though she knew she would have to. She just…didn’t want to.

“Brave heart, Doctor,” the Doctor whispered to herself. It didn’t really make much of a difference.

The alert that came on a moment later did. 

“EVERYBODY TO BATTLE STATIONS,” it blared, through the command room. “EVERYBODY TO BATTLE STATIONS.”

“They’re starting,” the Doctor whispered. It was now or never. She had to stop Susan, before she led an entire fleet into a dead pocket universe.

Without warning, she jerked to life, and lunged for the command console.

————

There wasn’t much to do in the jail cell.

Graham took the bench, Ryan the floor. Yaz stayed on her feet; she was too jittery. She could barely keep herself from pacing, and only because she knew that there wasn’t much room to do so.

“Do you think we can help her?” she asked for what might have been the third time, and received only sighs in return.

“I don’t think we can, love,” Graham said kindly. “But I have faith in her. She’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, she will.” Ryan didn’t look quite as faithful as Graham but he didn’t look entirely worried either. Rather he was staring, far-off into the distance.

After a moment, he shifted and said, “You know, she never told us about her planet. She never told us anything.”

“It might be a painful subject,” Graham said. “And you know the Doc ain’t the most open person in the world.”

“Yeah, but—” Ryan shifted uncomfortably. “But still. I thought we were a family. Fam. Whatever.”

“We are,” Yaz said firmly. “And she did tell us in the end. She might have told us anyway, when she was ready.”

“Maybe,” Ryan said, though he didn’t look at all convinced. “But it would be nice if she would, you know, trust us.”

“It takes a while to trust people,” Graham pointed out. “’Specially for the Doc.”

“We’ve been traveling with her for over a year,” Ryan said. “She should trust us now.”

Graham leaned back considering this. “Yeah, well, I was thinking about that. Because you know, the Doc is so much older than us—maybe a year isn’t enough for her. Or even two. Maybe she just needs a longer time.”

Yaz watched him as he spoke, considering this. Truth was, she was feeling almost the same sort of way Ryan was, though she had been trying to talk herself out of it. Still, Graham put the Doctor’s reluctance to open up in an entirely new light. 

“I think I get what you mean,” she said after a long moment. “That makes a lot of sense. And well, we can’t force her to open up.”

“Yeah, but she should tell us things,” Ryan said. “I mean, I get what you’re saying, but we can’t be in the dark about where we’re going and such. Where she wants to take us. We should have a say.”

“And we will,” Graham said. “After she sorts this out. We’ll have a talk. But first, let her deal with this.”

“Yeah,” Ryan sighed, and shifted, settling back against the wall. “Okay.”

—————

Susan was just about to close the door to her own private command ship when the Doctor stepped inside. She turned at the pneumatic swish of the door, and very nearly smiled.

“I didn’t think you’d make it, grandfather,” she said. The Doctor only smiled uneasily in response, and stepped farther inside.

“Had a change of heart,” she said.

“You mean you wanted to do damage control,” Susan said. The Doctor pursed her lips unhappily, but didn’t disagree.

“You know me too well, don’t you, dear?” she said instead. Susan only smiled, and turned back to the controls.

“We’re family.”

“We are.” Susan didn’t look up, but saw out of the corner of her eye as the Doctor stepped up beside her to the ship’s dashboard. “Which is why I need to come with you. You have to see that I’m right.”

“Or lying,” Susan said with a slight rebuke, and at the Doctor’s frown, laughed softly. “Oh, c’mon, grandfather. You’re the biggest liar I know. Especially when you think it’ll keep me out of trouble.”

The Doctor’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You never were very good at listening to me.”

“Suppose not much has changed.” With one last twist of a knob, the doors sealed, and a few seconds later, the ship rose smoothly into the air. It turned, and pointed towards the enormous crack, hovering in space.

“First ones through?” The Doctor asked. “I suppose you’ve got thousands of ships that will beam into this space at any moment.”

“They’ll come only a few hundred at a time through the rift, and will wait hidden by cloaking technology until we’re ready.” With both hands, Susan began to pilot towards the crack. “You were the one who taught me in the war that a true leader leads from the front.”

“And only when the situation calls for it,” the Doctor said gently. “I don’t think trumping up an imaginary war would count.”

Susan snorted. “Imaginary. Perhaps in your head, grandfather.”

“Hmmm.” The Doctor didn’t respond to this, but leaned forward, craning to get a glimpse out of the viewport. They were nearing the crack now, gliding smoothly towards it. It appeared to widen as they approached, golden and ineffable and magnificent, and Susan couldn’t help the small spark of excitement that rose in her chest. At long last, justice. The universe rid of the scourge of her own people, and from now on, safe. She could rebuild Gallifrey anew, in the image of peace. Not war, not the maligned hubris of the Time Lords. A new, humble society.

And then her grandfather would see that she was right.

“Bigger than it looks,” the Doctor observed beside her, and Susan laughed.

“The rift always had to be huge,” she said, as she deftly maneuvered the ship to what appeared to be the middle. “It has to fit hundreds of thousands of ships through. It has the make passage for an army. Believe me, grandfather, when I say I have been working on this for a very long time.”

“Oh, I believe you,” the Doctor said. “Trust me, I have complete and utter faith in your transdimensional engineering abilities. And your piloting skills. More than my own, in fact.”

“Good,” Susan said. “Because we’re…passing through.”

“Are we?” the Doctor said, and immediately had the answer to her own question. She looked up, just as the entire viewport flooded with golden light, blinding them. However, Susan didn’t let up on the controls, and instead pressed forward, driving them through.

And then they were through. They soared out of the crack and into orbit around Gallifrey.

“Perfect.” Susan couldn’t help a small smile of satisfaction. “Everything as planned.”

“It certainly is,” the Doctor said. “What are you going to do now?” 

Susan glanced at her, studying for a long moment, then looked back out the viewport. “I’m going to make sure they aren’t expecting us, of course.”

“Ah, right.” The Doctor nodded, her hands clasped behind her back. “Can’t let that happen. Well—” She nodded towards the planet below— “Lead the way.”

Susan did just that, nosing the ship down, skipping through the atmosphere. Then she pulled the ship up, and stopped.

“It’s gray,” she said with a frown. “Why is it gray?”

Beside her, an almost inaudible sigh. Incredibly tired. “Why do you think?”

“No.” With a surge of determination, Susan nosed the ship down once more. “It can’t be.”

But the lower they went through the atmosphere, the more clear it became. The entire planet was clouded over with gray smoke, billowing and endless, and as they descended, slowly it started to clear, until at last with one final descent, they plunged through the smoke and came up the ruins of Gallifrey.

For that was all it could be called. Ruins. There was nothing left but smoke and rubble, ash and bone and a billion voices silenced. Susan stared. It was all she could do. 

After several impossibly long moments, she spoke in a small voice. “You didn’t lie to me.”

The Doctor edged a millimeter closer, and Susan felt a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, dear. When have I ever lied to you?”

“All the time.” Susan jerked away sharply. Then, she spun around and jabbed a finger at the Doctor’s chest, though she wasn’t sure why. “You knew! You came with me just so I could see it, so I could—”

“So you could understand.” The Doctor stepped forward, her eyes very large, and very sad indeed. “Susan, I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. You never do.”

“I—” Susan’s finger sagged. She stared, speechless, with no idea of what to say. The Doctor was right. She would never have listened, not unless she had seen it with her own eyes, which now—which now—

“They’re all gone,” she whispered, and with those words felt the ghost of hope slip away, lost in the smoke surrounding them. “All those people, that I was going to—?”

“Invade?” the Doctor asked softly.

“Help,” Susan whispered. Her arm fell to her side. “I was going to change them, grandfather. I was going to make a new world, a new Gallifrey, and now there’s only—”

“Ash and bone.” The Doctor stepped forward, and reached out, and without thinking, Susan fell into her arms.

In a moment, she felt like a girl again, caught in one of her grandfather’s sparing hugs. They used to anchor her then, and they anchored her now as she sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, no longer the military leader she had meant to be, but only a granddaughter and an heir to a lost home. Again.

“The troops—” She pulled back after several minutes, snot and tears on her face, as sudden panic hit her. “I need to recall—”

“They aren’t coming.” The Doctor’s voice came muffled into her hair. “I already canceled the command. You shouldn’t have left me with access to your control room, dear.”

“Oh.” Despite herself, Susan laughed weakly. “Oh. You—I should have know.”

“Maybe.” The Doctor’s voice was gentle. “But you’ll just have to remember that the next time you invade a planet.”

“I—” Susan didn’t have words for this. Tears were still falling down her face, and she could barely breathe for the weight on her chest. “I don’t know what to do now, grandfather.”

For a moment, there was a pause. Susan felt the Doctor stiffen in front of her.

Then she only tightened her grip, and pulled her close. “Me neither, dear. Me neither.”


End file.
